WIRCEBURGENSES. – A group of Jesuit professors at the University of Würzburg who jointly compiled a complete course of theology, known under the name of Theologia Erbioploensis and more commonly as Theologia Wirceburgensis.
The work was undertaken at the urgent insistence of the prince-bishop, Filippo von Greiffenku, who had ordered the professors to replace the prevailing practice of dictating lectures—which was excessively burdensome for the students—with a textbook. The professors who collaborated in it were Fathers Enrico Kilber, Tommaso Holzlau, Ignazio Neubauer, and Oderico Munier, already known for various works previously published; these were taken up and sometimes modified to adapt them for use as a textbook for the students, and were combined and arranged to form the: Theologia dogmatica, polemica, scholastica et moralis lectionibus academicis accomodata (14 vols., Würzburg 1766–71; 2nd ed., 10 vols., Paris 1852–54; 3rd ed., 10 vols., there 1879–80). In this edition, the following volumes belong to Father Kilber (1710–82): I, Principia theologica (Sacred Scripture, Divine Tradition, the Church of Jesus Christ, Councils, the Roman Pontiff, the Holy Fathers, Theology and Ecclesiastical Jurisprudence, Reason and History, Heresies, Condemned Propositions); III (One and Triune God, Angels, Creation); VII (Sin, Grace, Justification and Merit); VIII (Theological Virtues, with an appendix on the Cardinal Virtues, taken from Lessius’s De justitia et jure). Father Holzlau (1716–83) authored vols. IV (The Incarnation of the Divine Word, with a vigorous defense of the orthodoxy of Cyril of Alexandria and Pope Honorius); VI (On Right and Justice, with an appendix on the Virtues of Religion, taken from the aforementioned work by Lessius); IX (Sacraments in General, Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, with a theological-critical treatise on the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, whose authenticity he accepts); X (the second part: Holy Orders and Matrimony). Father Neubauer authored vols. II, Tractatus de religione (against atheists, polytheists, Muslims, Jews, and sectarians, especially Bayle, Voltaire, and Rousseau); V (Beatitude, Human Acts, Laws). Father Munier authored vol. X (the first part: Penance and Extreme Unction). This theological course, distinguished by its clarity, order, and solidity, and which gives equal consideration to speculative and positive elements, thereby bringing the ancient theology of Germany to a worthy conclusion (M. Grabmann, Gesch. der kath. Theologie, Freiburg im Br. 1933, p. 196; Italian translation, Milan 1937, p. 273), has always retained its well-deserved reputation, even among more recent theologians such as Scheeben, Hurter, Pesch, and Grabmann.